Truth and Knowledge

Truth and Knowledge: v. Cognition and Reality

On-line since: 22nd December, 2000

CONCEPTS AND IDEAS,
therefore, comprise part of the given and at the
same time lead beyond it. This makes it possible to define what other
activity is concerned in attaining knowledge.

Through a postulate we have separated from the rest of the given
world-picture a particular part of it; this was done because it lies
in the nature of cognition to start from just this particular part.
Thus we separated it out only to enable us to understand the act of
cognition. In so doing, it must be clear that we have artificially
torn apart the unity of the world-picture. We must realize that what
we have separated out from the given has an essential connection with
the world content, irrespective of our postulate. This provides the
next step in the theory of knowledge: it must consist in restoring
that unity which we tore apart in order to make knowledge possible.
The act of restoration consists in thinking about the world as given.
Our thinking consideration of the world brings about the actual union
of the two parts of the world content: the part we survey as given on
the horizon of our experience, and the part which has to be produced
in the act of cognition before that can be given also. The act of
cognition is the synthesis of these two elements. Indeed, in every
single act of cognition, one part appears as something produced within
that act itself, and, through the act, as added to the merely given.
This part, in actual fact, is always so produced, and only appears as
something given at the beginning of epistemological theory.

To permeate the world, as given, with concepts and ideas, is a
thinking consideration of things. Therefore, thinking is the act
which mediates knowledge. It is only when thinking arranges the
world-picture by means of its own activity that knowledge can come
about. Thinking itself is an activity which, in the moment of
cognition, produces a content of its own. Therefore, insofar as the
content that is cognized issues from thinking, it contains no problem
for cognition. We have only to observe it; the very nature of what we
observe is given us directly. A description of thinking is also
at the same time the science of thinking. Logic, too, has always been a
description of thought-forms, never a science that proves anything.
Proof is only called for when the content of thought is synthesized
with some other content of the world. Gideon Spicker is therefore
quite right when he says in his book, Lessings Weltanschauung,
(Lessing's World-View), page 5, “We can never experience, either
empirically or logically, whether thinking in itself is correct.” One
could add to this that with thinking, all proof ceases. For proof
presupposes thinking. One may be able to prove a particular fact, but
one can never prove proof as such. We can only describe what a proof
is. In logic, all theory is pure empiricism; in the science of logic
there is only observation. But when we want to know something other
than thinking, we can do so only with the help of thinking; this means
that thinking has to approach something given and transform its
chaotic relationship with the world-picture into a systematic one.
This means that thinking approaches the given world-content as an
organizing principle. The process takes place as follows: Thinking
first lifts out certain entities from the totality of the world-whole.
In the given nothing is really separate; everything is a connected
continuum. Then thinking relates these separate entities to each other
in accordance with the thought-forms it produces, and also determines
the outcome of this relationship. When thinking restores a
relationship between two separate sections of the world-content, it
does not do so arbitrarily. Thinking waits for what comes to light of
its own accord as the result of restoring the relationship. And it is
this result alone which is knowledge of that particular section of the
world content. If the latter were unable to express anything about
itself through that particular relationship established by thinking,
then this attempt made by thinking would fail, and one would have to
try again. All knowledge depends on man's establishing a correct
relationship between two or more elements of reality, and
comprehending the result of this.

There is no doubt that many of our attempts to grasp things by means
of thinking, fail; this is apparent not only in the history of
science, but also in ordinary life; it is just that in the simple
cases we usually encounter, the right concept replaces the wrong one
so quickly that we seldom or never become aware of the latter.

When Kant speaks of “the synthetic unity of apperception” it is
evident that he had some inkling of what we have shown here to be an
activity of thinking, the purpose of which is to organize the
world-content systematically. But the fact that he believed that the a
priori laws of pure science could be derived from the rules according
to which this synthesis takes place, shows how little this inkling
brought to his consciousness the essential task of thinking. He did
not realize that this synthetic activity of thinking is only a
preparation for discovering natural laws as such. Suppose, for
example, that we detach one content, a, from the world-picture, and
likewise another, b. If we are to gain knowledge of the law connecting
a and b, then thinking must first relate a to b
so that through this relationship the connection between them presents itself
as given. Therefore, the actual content of a law of nature is derived from
the given, and the task of thinking is merely to provide the opportunity
for relating the elements of the world-picture so that the laws
connecting them come to light. Thus there is no question of objective
laws resulting from the synthetic activity of thinking alone.

We must now ask what part thinking plays in building up our scientific
world-picture, in contrast to the merely given world-picture. Our
discussion shows that thinking provides the thought-forms to which the
laws that govern the world correspond. In the example given above, let
us assume a to be the cause and b the effect. The fact that
a and b are causally connected could never become knowledge
if thinking were not able to form the concept of causality. Yet in order to
recognize, in a given case, that a is the cause and b the
effect, it is necessary for a and b to correspond to what we
understand by cause and effect. And this is true of all other categories
of thinking as well.

At this point it will be useful to refer briefly to Hume's description
of the concept of causality. Hume said that our concepts of cause and
effect are due solely to habit. We so often notice that a particular
event is followed by another that accordingly we form the habit of
thinking of them as causally connected, i.e. we expect the second
event to occur whenever we observe the first. But this viewpoint stems
from a mistaken representation of the relationship concerned in
causality. Suppose that I always meet the same people every day for a
number of days when I leave my house; it is true that I shall then
gradually come to expect the two events to follow one another, but in
this case it would never occur to me to look for a causal connection
between the other persons and my own appearance at the same spot. I
would look to quite different elements of the world-content in order
to explain the facts involved. In fact, we never do determine a causal
connection to be such from its sequence in time, but from its own
content as part of the world-content which is that of cause and
effect.

The activity of thinking is only a formal one in the upbuilding of our
scientific world-picture, and from this it follows that no cognition
can have a content which is a priori, in that it is established prior
to observation (thinking divorced from the given); rather must the
content be acquired wholly through observation. In this sense all our
knowledge is empirical. Nor is it possible to see how this could be
otherwise. Kant's judgments a priori fundamentally are not cognition,
but are only postulates. In the Kantian sense, one can always only
say: If a thing is to be the object of any kind of experience, then it
must conform to certain laws. Laws in this sense are regulations which
the subject prescribes for the objects. Yet one would expect that if
we are to attain knowledge of the given then it must be derived, not
from the subject, but from the object.

Thinking says nothing a priori about the given; it produces a
posteriori, i.e. the thought-form, on the basis of which the
conformity to law of the phenomena becomes apparent.

Seen in this light, it is obvious that one can say nothing a priori
about the degree of certainty of a judgment attained through
cognition. For certainty, too, can be derived only from the given. To
this it could be objected that observation only shows that some
connection between phenomena once occurred, but not that such a
connection must occur, and in similar cases always will occur.
This assumption is also wrong. When I recognize some particular connection
between elements of the world-picture, this connection is provided by
these elements themselves; it is not something I think into them, but
is an essential part of them, and must necessarily be present whenever
the elements themselves are present.

Only if it is considered that scientific effort is merely a matter of
combining facts of experience according to subjective principles which
are quite external to the facts themselves, — only such an outlook
could believe that a and b may be connected by one law to-day
and by another to-morrow (John Stuart Mill).
[ 109 ]
Someone who recognizes that the
laws of nature originate in the given and therefore themselves
constitute the connection between the phenomena and determine them,
will not describe laws discovered by observation as merely of
comparative universality. This is not to assert that a natural law
which at one stage we assume to be correct must therefore be
universally valid as well. When a later event disproves a law, this
does not imply that the law had only a limited validity when first
discovered, but rather that we failed to ascertain it with complete
accuracy. A true law of nature is simply the expression of a
connection within the given world-picture, and it exists as little
without the facts it governs as the facts exist without the law.

We have established that the nature of the activity of cognition is to
permeate the given world-picture with concepts and ideas by means of
thinking. What follows from this fact? If the directly-given were a
totality, complete in itself, then such an elaboration of it by means
of cognition would be both impossible and unnecessary. We should then
simply accept the given as it is, and would be satisfied with it in
that form. The act of cognition is possible only because the given
contains something hidden; this hidden does not appear as long as we
consider only its immediate aspect; the hidden aspect only reveals
itself through the order that thinking brings into the given. In other
words, what the given appears to be before it has been elaborated by
thinking, is not its full totality.

This becomes clearer when we consider more closely the factors
concerned in the act of cognition. The first of these is the given.
That it is given is not a feature of the given, but is only an
expression for its relation to the second factor in the act of
cognition. Thus what the given is as such remains quite undecided by
this definition. The second factor is the conceptual content of the
given; it is found by thinking, in the act of cognition, to be
necessarily connected with the given. Let us now ask: 1) Where is the
division between given and concept? 2) And where are they united? The
answers to both of these questions are undoubtedly to be found in the
preceding discussion. The division occurs solely in the act of
cognition. In the given they are united. This shows that the
conceptual content must necessarily be a part of the given, and also
that the act of cognition consists in re-uniting the two parts of the
world-picture, which to begin with are given to cognition separated
from each other. Therefore, the given world-picture becomes complete
only through that other, indirect kind of given which is brought to it
by thinking. The immediate aspect of the world-picture reveals itself
as quite incomplete to begin with.

If, in the world-content, the thought-content were united with the
given from the first, no knowledge would exist, and the need to go
beyond the given would never arise. If, on the other hand, we were to
produce the whole content of the world in and by means of thinking
alone, no knowledge would exist either. What we ourselves produce we
have no need to know. Knowledge therefore rests upon the fact that the
world-content is originally given to us in incomplete form; it
possesses another essential aspect, apart from what is directly
present. This second aspect of the world-content, which is not
originally given, is revealed through thinking. Therefore the content
of thinking, which appears to us to be something separate, is not a
sum of empty thought-forms, but comprises determinations (categories);
however, in relation to the rest of the world-content, these
determinations represent the organizing principle. The world-content
can be called reality only in the form it attains when the two aspects
of it described above have been united through knowledge.